Banner dives with Bandito

posted Dec 14, 2013, 4:41 PM by Pieter Booth

Ed Gullekson, Dan Ritchie, and Pieter Booth joined another 7 or 8 divers today for dives at Z's reef and Sunrise. Both dives are walls with max. depths of about 60-70 feet. Z's reef is failry short wall with only about 15-20 vertical rise but with quite a few overhangs and some boulders. Z's reef revealed 4 wolf eels and a handful of GPOs and Ed and Dan spent some quality time with a little grunt sculpin that was parading about. Sunrise is a taller wall with more holes and boulders and a pretty big rubble field at the base of the wall. "I dove sunrise wall and saw no wolf eels" said the blind man. Actually, only one pair of divers saw a wolfie, but two of us counted 8 GPOs, including one that kept "reaching out" to us.

Sea star wasting syndrome was very much in evidence at both sites, with only a few healthy leather, blood, and slime stars. I did not see one sunflower star that was alive and well, just many piles of goo and many others in very poor shape. I did see quite a few juvenile sun stars that had missing limbs that were regenerating, though.

It was cloudy but pretty calm with water temp. about 48 and air temp not much different. As usual, the crew of the Sampan kept us well hydrated and fed.

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